


odds are long (so why not play)

by cinderlily



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Living Together, M/M, Misunderstandings, injured player, stupid stupid boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 20:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12140673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderlily/pseuds/cinderlily
Summary: Jake comes home with a bum leg and a breaking heart. He knows he should do something about the latter but Max doesn't seem to want to make that easy.





	odds are long (so why not play)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freetodream5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freetodream5/gifts), [LuciFern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciFern/gifts).



Jake got to Arizona four days before Max planned to. It wasn’t until he was dropped off at the front door of the house, bag at his feet, that he realized he wasn’t entirely sure if this was his home anymore. They hadn’t really gone into long-term details as to what was going to happen after the first year. Plus, he’d been Max’s rookie. That was just the way it went. 

He crutched himself up to the door and grabbed his keys out of the front pocket of his bag, the one that the Uber driver exceptionally helped him to the door with. He slipped the key in the lock and the alarm went off, not shockingly. Blessedly the panel was right off the door as he couldn’t make it much further at the speed it was necessary. He hit the buttons and turned it off and looked around. 

It _felt_ like home. Well, almost. Two important pieces were missing, Max somewhere making way too much noise and Orion there to check who the hell was there. But he was still … He looked around the house and how it was filled with stupid things that were tied to even stupider memories. Game systems, a foosball table that had been bought on a whim, a couch that he had spent many a day off curled up on watching bad TV and movies. 

His phone went off in his pocket. He looked to find a text message from Max, “ _That you?_ ” 

He frowned at the phone. “ _Dude, it’s like four PM, you too drunk to read who you are texting?_ ”

“ _No, I got a text from alarm company. House alarm went off._ ”

“ _Yeah. That’s me. I didn’t know you had to text messages set up for every time it went off. Hope it’s ok I’m here._ ” 

“ _Just for the summer and freaking duh, Kid. I’ll be back on Friday._ ” 

He hated the nickname Kid. Granted it was only from Max and it only slightly edged out the fact that most people called him Chych or the stupid Chick emoji on the phone (thanks Lawson, dick). He was painfully aware of the fact that he was a kid to Max. Had been since day one, even if they would have gone to High School together. 

Leaving his bag at the door he hobbled more than used his crutches over to the couch and fell back on his spot, gingerly lifting his leg up to lay on it. He had a meeting with the trainers to go through more of his recovery routine the next day. He would rather go through the surgery all over again than sit in a room with people staring at him and telling him what his life would be like for the next who knew how long but apparently he didn’t have a choice. 

He picked up his phone, no more texts from Max. He opened the text with his sister and sent a picture of his walking boot on the couch. He captioned it, “ _Welcome home, your leg itches and you are sweating for forever. Magic hockey career._ ” 

“ _So where’s your boy at? Making you a delicious dinner to welcome you home? Bringing you ice and painkillers?_ ” Taylor shot back. 

He stuck his tongue out even if it was just a text. “ _He’s still somewhere else. And he’s not my boy. Shut up._ ” 

“ _Love you, brotha._ ” 

“ _Love you, Tink._ ” 

He was thankful he had his sister, not that his parents or friends weren’t great, but his sister was the one person in his life who’d always been the one to listen to him. Even though they lived apart more than they lived together due to his hockey and her life, he was never more than a text away from a realistic ear.

She’d been the first to know he was bi, the one to talk him down from leaving hockey because of it. She’d been the second to know his feelings for Max, after Lawson had plied it out of him with Tequila Sunrises and a few well-placed questions. (Though he suspected she guessed from early on, she was creepy like that.) 

She was a lot less subtle, though, about ribbing him than Lawson was. Lawson, he figured, knew the stakes a little more than his sister did. She knew that it could affect his career, but Lawson knew that it could bring down his life. He wasn’t Sidney Crosby or Jonathan Toews. He was just a kid who played hockey pretty okay. He couldn’t be the face for gay rights without losing everything. 

So he took her constant begging for him to tell her about what was going on in stride. He didn’t tell her that _nothing_ was happening because holy shit _nothing_ was all that could happen. He was meant to stay in a nice neat box and it was checked ‘heteronormative’. 

He’d gone on a few pretty decent dates the year before, making his life easy with the guys. Max’s only rule was that music was played if… things happened. He hadn’t really had to play music. He was thankful that Max never told the guys that. It just never felt like the right time, not with Max in the building. 

Plus, sadly enough, he was mostly comparing anyone he dated to Max. Even the few times that Lawson had all but dragged him to tiny gay bars in random cities and told him to find a guy, any guy, to just let him see what it was like. None of them was the right type. 

He picked his phone up again and looked at it. He thought idly about calling his mom or maybe calling his grandma. He hadn’t talked to either except for the quick, “Landed safe” call he made to his mom a few hours before. Instead, he opened up the browser on his phone and typed in ‘Phoenix Condos’. 

Twenty minutes later he flipped the phone onto the coffee table and rolled to the side in the softest way possible, falling asleep in less than a minute. 

*

Jake didn’t get any of the answers he wanted the next day at his meeting. He’d been hoping for a more concrete timeline but the trainers and the doctors were hesitant to give a date. After the pretty consistent amount of pain he’d been in for the last few weeks, the initial physical training, the pressure he felt about disappointing the team, he left the appointment feeling cranky and tired. 

He had to Uber most places, as his foot made driving difficult and he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk getting into an accident on top of the stupid klutzy injury he already had. When he got back to their— to the house he had more or less decided on the greasiest gross fast food delivered to him as fast as he could. 

Then he opened the door and was startled to find a familiar scraping on the floor. A flash of pale yellow and then Orion was jumping up on him, bumping his nose onto Jake’s hand and whining when he smelled the boot. 

“Yeah dude, sorry about that,” he said. It probably smelled like sweat and grossness even worse to the poor pups nose. His brain clicked when he heard a noise in the kitchen. 

_Holy shit._

“Max?” he called out.

There was silence. He crutched his way through the hallway and towards the kitchen, finding _Max_ with his Beats on, making what looked like cut up potatoes while wearing nothing but his red shorts. God, give him strength. 

Max must have caught him in his periphery, jerking his headphones off. A thumping bass and what Jake was pretty sure was Chance the rapper came out of both sides. “Hey, you’re home!” 

“That shouldn’t be the shocking part of this conversation, Max,” Jake said. “ **You’re** home. It’s Tuesday?” 

Max shrugged. “Eh, Los Angeles was getting boring and the newlyweds were making me crazy… so I rebooked my flight. Didn’t even cost me anything. I’m making breakfast for dinner, you in?” 

Jake nodded and said nothing. Max had learned to cook for himself over the years, out of necessity, but had more or less fallen back on a small list of what he’d make. Chicken, veggies, and rice were a standard, as was breakfast for dinner. But Jake was more confused as to what the hell he was doing _there_ to rib him for being predictable as fuck. 

“How’d the meeting go?” Max asked and Jake let out a grunt of disapproval. 

He hobbled his way to the table, putting the crutches on the wall. “Wait and see, I was hoping they’d give me a timeline but it’s ‘too soon’ for that.” 

“Bummer,” Max said and went into the fridge, handing him a beer. Jake had to wave him off. 

“Painkillers,” he frowned. Ones he’d taken in the car, which was you know, not the best idea. He had maybe an hour before he was either hazy or passed out. Max shrugged and went back to grab a bottle of water. 

Orion had come over to him and put his head on Jake’s blessedly okay knee. He looked up at him with huge round eyes and mewled at him. “Aww, Orion, he’s gonna be fine.” 

“Is he okay?” Jake asked, rubbing at the dog's ears. 

“He can smell the drugs on you, you smell off so he thinks you’re sick,” Max said, spooning some potatoes onto a plate. “You’re one of his people. He worries.” 

Jake looked down at the dog and tilted his head. He was one of his people. Max was his person. That was how this worked. He’d been the interloper. It’d taken weeks for the dog to even leave Max’s side when it came to Jake living in the house. (Which was valid, he should be near Max, he didn’t fault him for it.) 

Max put a plate full of eggs, potatoes and turkey bacon on the table. It wasn’t exactly the pity dinner he’d been envisioning in the car but he was more than okay with eating it. He was hungry and Max made it. Max was _there_. It might be the fuzz of painkiller but he was not processing that as quickly as he thought he would. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Max asked, coming to sit down across from him. 

_Shit_ , Jake thought. He scrambled for a deflection. 

“I was just thinking how thankful I am that you aren’t on Duck Dynasty anymore.” 

Max made a face and rubbed at his face. “It feels weird. NoMovember is right around the corner though.” 

“Oh dear lord, no,” Jake said, shaking his head and laughing. 

“What?” Max said and reached out to nudge him. “We can’t all be Abercrombie and Fitch.” 

He felt the blush rising on his face but hoped he could play it off with the laughter. 

* 

Max watched a movie while he dozed on the couch, Orion nuzzled between the two of them. He kept feeling the occasional nudge of Orion on his ankle and the occasional lick. Max would whisper to him though and he would settle. 

An hour or so into the movie he heard his phone vibrating on the table. He figured it would go to voicemail but to his horror, he heard Max swipe it and suddenly his voice at half volume. 

“Hey Taylor,” Max answered. Jake froze, his whole body tensing. “Yeah, I came back early. Figured we couldn’t let the broken one be alone.” 

That was most definitely not what he had been told a few hours ago. He felt an itch on his toe, the one _in_ the monstrosity of a boot and tried to keep his eyes closed and not twitch desperately to get it to scratch against the inside of it. 

“He’s okay. Tired. They didn’t give him a timeline today, so he was you know…”Max paused. “Well, yeah, but that was an initial guess. They don’t want to fuck around with muscles and tendons in your leg. It’s like rule number one of hockey. After concussion protocol.” 

Another long pause. “Naw, I got him. Or Orion, the pup is more worried than us all.” 

His toe was driving him crazy but he was pretty sure he would go crazy rather than actually say a word. What the hell was going on? This was… not what he expected. He didn’t think that Max would talk to his sister outside of the polite need of a visit. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Max said and he could almost hear the smile on his face. “I’ll text you so he can’t lie. Lates T. Chych.” 

With that, the room was back to just the sound of the TV and the ambient noise of air conditioning that was running on high even in September. It baffled Max, but Jake was used to it. His toe still itched so he finally wiggled his toes to the side of the boot, trying his best to keep it low-key. He figured he got away with it except he peeked his eyes open and found Max looking directly at him. 

“What are you doing?” Max asked. “Trying to escape the boot?” 

“Shut up,” Jake said, purposefully slurring his speech just slightly. “My big toe itches.” 

A long moment passed and then he saw Max grab a pen off the coffee table, lean over Orion, and gently put it through the tip of the boot, itching his toe almost exactly where he needed it to be itched. He might have moaned, it wasn’t his finest hour. Max smiled and rolled his eyes. 

“All you had to do was ask, weirdo,” Max pointed out. “I’m sitting RIGHT here.” 

Jake tilted his head to the side to avoid the glare of the TV giving away the color in the top of his cheeks and thought about the least sexy things he could to avoid the fact that yes, he was totally popping a boner over a toe itching and Max being _right there_. “I know, I know. Thanks, Max.” 

“No problem, Kid,” Max said. “Now shut up, Iron Man is about to go postal on Captain America.” 

It was actually one of his favorite parts of the movie, so he tilted his head back towards the screen, focusing on Chris Evans and his hotness because at least that was untouchable. His eyes started to lose focus and he curled up on his side. The last thing he really remembered was Iron Man putting him against a wall. It wasn’t the worst image to lull him to sleep. 

* 

Max nudged him awake sometime later. “Come on, I’d pick you up but we don’t need two injured players to start the season.” 

“Wha?”

“Sleep time,” Max said. “Or at least, sleep in a BED time.”

Jake got to his feet and regretted it instantly. He’d forgotten in his sleep haze the fact that putting full pressure on his foot still felt like someone was knifing him. He grunted. 

“Dude,” Max sighed, offering his (considerably shorter) shoulder to him. He took the offer though, as awkward as the walking was because it meant less of the stabbing. 

They stumbled into his room and he fell face first into bed before repositioning himself on his back. He hated sleeping on his back, but with the boot, it was the only functional way of sleeping on a bed. He’d tried lying on his side with the boot on a pillow but it ended in him scraping the crap out of his good leg. 

He looked to say thank you to Max but Max was out of the room, which sucked. He wasn’t exactly expecting a bedtime story but a good night would be nice. Also, the freaking lights were on. Which meant he would have to get to the lights to turn them off. 

Except Max walked back in with a bottle of water and his pill bottle. He read the label and checked his watch before offering two huge white pills to him and giving him. “Take these. It’s got to be at least six hours and trust me you don’t want to wake up to the wear off.” 

He knew for a fact he didn’t want to wake up to the wear off. He shimmied up to a half seated position, put the pills on his tongue and grabbed the water bottle to wash it down. 

“Thanks.” 

Max shrugged. “Now say goodnight to Orion, he spent half the night smelling your breath.” 

“Should I leave?” Jake asked hazily, sure that he shouldn’t let the dog get distracted from Max for even a minute. 

“What? Shut the hell up and rest, man. Orion’s got us.” 

“Night ‘Rion,” Jake put his hand out to rub at the back of Orion’s ears. The dog huffed and licked his palm.

Max muttered something and Jake looked up at him curiously. Instead, he got Max taking the bottle out of his hand. “Night Chych.” 

“Night Max.” 

* 

The next morning he was up painfully early, a side effect of time differences and the fact that he probably still slept a good ten hours the night before. He was up early enough to let Orion out to go to the bathroom because Max was a lazy bum in the morning and it was just routine for them.

He let himself focus on the tasks he needed to do. Get food in his system, a shake he’d made a few days ago and kept in the freezer. He wasn’t much for cooking. He was used to the routine of billet houses and going to the rink for food. Protein shakes were the peak of his skills. 

His leg was bugging him, but that was going to be a constant for a while so he avoided thinking about it by going through his phone. 

“ _Your boy is cute_.” 

He blinked at his phone. It was his sister and the weird half-memory of the phone call from the night before came rushing into his brain. 

She’d sent the text this morning, or this morning for her which meant _hopefully_ he hadn’t seen her send it. There were a lot of other texts on his phone, emails, and shit that would surely eclipse this but still. It was like his stomach had leaped to his throat then fallen down to his knees. 

_Shit_. 

He thought back to the night before, brain full of fuzz and hazy thoughts and not really able to pick out any indication that Max saw anything. His phone had been on his side table when he woke up, attached to the charger because apparently Max was taught well. It was just the timing. He had no idea what time he was put in bed, what time Max would have looked at the phone or even IF he cared enough to look at the phone. 

Max had seemed gentle, almost fond even, on the phone. Granted, it could just be the same way you are fond of a baby sibling but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t that way. His sister was at work, there was no calling her, but maybe she had a better read of the conversations. She had not been on painkillers at the time, a factor he would think could cloud the rational. Then again, his sister wanted this to go well for him, naturally, so she might have read it wrong. 

There was scratching at the door, and he opened it to let Orion in. Orion sniffed at him and whined. When Jake sat down Orion slipped down around his feet and curled there for a while. He was worried about him. 

“I’m fine, pup,” he said, softly. “It’s temporary. Don’t worry.” 

Orion looked up and gave him that truly creepy look that with all the dogs in his life only Orion could pull off. It was like he could understand him even when he knew he couldn’t. No head tilt, no panting, just a dead-on stare like, ‘You hairless dogs are so much work.’

“Hey, O,” Jake leaned in and said softly. “You think Max likes me?” 

He instantly felt like the biggest dork on earth, the literal child that Max called him most days. Orion broke out in a panty smile and licked his face all over. He didn’t know what he was expecting, he _was_ a dog. Had he been hoping for a wink or something? 

“Thanks,” he muttered and sipped on the shake a little bit more. If he had the energy he would get up to grab a spoon and treat it like the ice cream he would rather it be. But getting up felt like climbing stairs without railings, neither of which were happening too soon. 

He ate in silence for a bit, wondering if he should call his trainer to get a physical therapist scheduled here but it was still early and he wasn’t up for that. He fidgeted with his phone like he always did, scrolled through his public twitter, then his private one. Messed on Facebook. A lot of buddies were at college, posting pictures of themselves doing things that involved beer and dumb activities. 

Orion’s head lifted again and he looked up just in time to see Max stumble into the room blearily, looking like he was going to curl up on the floor and go back to sleep. It was barely 8, which for Max was like 5:30 to anyone else. 

Orion scrambled over to him and jumped up on his chest, smelling at his breath. Max, probably out of rout, let him do so and when the dog seemed satisfied he fell back to the ground. He still followed at Max’s feet as he went to the fridge to grab a bowl he popped into the microwave. 

Jake had learned over the last year that the key was to just let Max get through his basics before you approach him. The morning was not his time. So he tried to focus on the cup he was drinking from and not on the way that he was just wearing his sleep pants and how they hung from his body. He had almost become trained at side looking and he was fully aware of how creepy that was. 

The microwave dinged, Max back in the fridge pulled some fruit and a water bottle, and put them on the table before he grabbed the bowl and came to sit across from him. Jake wondered if he realized he wasn’t the only person in the room. It was actually kind of cute to see the annoyed look on his face. 

Jake’s stomach churned, protein mix lying thick at the bottom of it. He needed out of this house if he was thinking that Max was _cute_. It was getting beyond his control. 

As if on cue Max looked up and blinked at him. “ ‘Morning. How’s the leg?” 

“Still there,” Jake said, looking down at the boot. “I assume.” 

“Thanks for letting the devil out,” he said, taking a bite of oatmeal. 

Jake smiled at Orion who was waiting at Max’s feet now. “I thought I was giving you extra time to be asleep.” 

“Stupid body,” Max said as if that was an answer that made any degree of sense. 

“You going back to sleep after you eat?” 

Max made a face. “Naw took some insulin to even out. Makes me jittery.” 

“Sucks.” 

“Stupid body,” Max muttered again. It was really the closest that they had ever gotten to Max complaining about Diabetes to him in any way. Jake didn’t press. Instead, he just let it pass by. 

Jake finished the last of his shake, even if it felt like it went down like lead. Should he tell him he was going to move out? Probably not. He would just try and talk him out of it. Maybe it would be out of politeness or maybe it would be because he didn’t like to be alone. Either would be solved by the next Rookie he took in. 

“You got plans?” Max asked, breaking into his thoughts. 

Jake thought about it. “Naw.” 

“Want to go shopping?” 

Jake tilted his head, almost laughing. “For what? Shoes?” 

Max gave him a mid-bite glare, before swallowing. “I was thinking we could just go and walk around Fashion Square a bit, not too much and we’ll keep you near an area to sit. We could see a movie. Wonder Woman?” 

“Seen it. Twice.” 

“Me too, but _Gal Gadot_.” 

He thought to himself, ‘Chris Pine’ but Gal Gadot was pretty freaking sweet as well. “Okay.” 

There was a moment where Max looked a little blankly at him but then his patented grin spread across his face. Jake’s brain short-circuited and then returned to reality. It was like the guy knew what to do to make him feel fifteen again. 

“Sweet,” Max said. “You can’t drive, right?” 

Jake shrugged. “I can, but I don’t like it. Plus they’d kill me if I got into a car accident on top of everything else.” 

“Oh come on, don’t worry about the leadership,” Max gave him a toothy smile. “I’d kill you _first._ I’m still pissed it took your _mom_ calling me to tell me about your surgery.” 

He startled but Max had already looked back down at his food to scoop up some more. He should chirp him about being needy or stalking or something but really none of that seemed to be able to come to his mind. “You were mad?” 

Max looked back up at him with a confused tilt to his head. “Come on, you should have called me, we talked about this!” 

“We…. talked about this? When?”

“Our first call,” Max made a face. “You just got back home and you called me…” 

Jake swallowed around a rather large lump in his chest. He had about as much memory of this call as he had to pretty much anything in the days following the surgery. He remembered the pain and the fact that his sister had made him watch about three hundred episodes of Gilmore Girls. (The last ones were bullshit. Such bullshit.) But he talked to Max? He didn’t remember that and he was pretty sure he would. 

“I was on a lot of painkillers,” he said, mentally cringing as the horrific thought of what he could have said during that conversation hit him. He put a hand up. “But I’m sorry I didn’t call you beforehand?” 

“You told me that on the phone,” Max said. “It does explain why you kept saying that I was awesome but that the beard was an affront to humanity.”

Jake calmed down a little. “Well, it was.” 

“I sent you a picture of me shaved and you called me ‘babyface’,” Max laughed. “You remember that?” 

No. No, he did not. His brain scrambled to keep up with the conversation. “You do have a baby face, I mean not Murphs level or anything but definitely .. baby-esque.” 

“Dude, had I known you were drugged I would have messed with you more,” Max said, and Jake thanked every god he could think of that he hadn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to ask what he had said but he wanted to know more than anything. He called him awesome and insulted the beard. Fair enough. He knew prying would just get Max into his teasing mode. Counterproductive. 

He picked up his phone. “Want me to look up movie times?” 

“Make it early, we can beat the crowd and get good seats, keep your foot up as much as possible,” Max said. Jake gave himself a mental high five, distraction was good. “Then we can mess around. Want to go to Shake Shack after?” 

Jake made a face. “Healthier, dude, you can exercise, I am doomed to gain weight.” 

Max laughed, getting up with his plate. With his free hand, he squeezed Jake’s cheeks till his lips puckered. “Don’t worry, Chychy, you will still be the fairest of them all.” 

He swatted at Max’s hand. “I hate you.” 

“No you don’t, you love me,” Max said and Jake was glad he’d gone forward to put the plates in the sink as his eyes went wide.

* 

The movie was just as freaking baller as the first two times, and the third time he got to watch it by himself in a theater with Max, which was nicer. He had spent the second time trying to see if he could see any of the twists earlier but the third time he was proud that he remembered the plot points at all.

Max leaned over to him and got closer than necessary in an empty theater to point out some of the indicators to later things. He laughed louder than he needed to at jokes and he repeatedly threw things at Jake to get his attention. Jake responded in kind, only if it meant that he was going to keep up with him. Not chirping would get him more attention than ignoring the chirping. 

By the end, Jake teared up for the third time and Max, of course, noticed, nudging him. “My sisters didn’t even cry at that.” 

“Shut up,” he prodded back. “I didn’t cry at Civil War.” 

Max glared at him and sounded extremely offended. “But _Bucky_.” 

“See, emotions are a thing,” he stuck his tongue out and surreptitiously wiped at his eyes. It was freaking sad, and he would stand by that. 

It had gone to the credits roll, and they still sat there. Jake had to admit the trend of seats that let you put your legs up was one that he especially appreciated as of late. It made it so he could see movies without worrying and without as much throbbing pain. 

But he must have winced or something as Max eyed him suspiciously as he started to lower the seat and looked him up and down. 

“When was the last time you took anything?” 

Jake made a face at him. He wasn’t his kid or anything, he could take control of his own body. But Max had a way of staring him down. “When you gave me some last night.” 

“Dude, you are supposed to take them every six hours!” Max said. “Did you bring any with you?” 

Jake frowned. “Um. No?” 

Max stood up and grabbed in his pocket bringing out two round pills. 

“You pocketed some of my pills?” Jake’s eyes went wide. 

Max looked dutifully abashed but shrugged it off. “I figured you’d be a jerk and forget it. Or purposely not bring them. So I put two in my pocket just in case. You’ve berated me enough about my blood sugar, so really you can eat me.”

He shoved the pills at Jake and picked up the almost empty soda that Jake had gotten. Jake took one, pocketed it, and put it the other on his tongue to show it to Max. “I’d rather be semi-lucid for the rest of the day.” 

Blessedly Max didn’t make a fuss about it, but he would probably hear about it if he even made a semi wince of pain the rest of the day. He figured he would be okay with that, maybe he’d even use the other one if he needed it. But he was sick of feeling the numb feeling painkillers gave him. 

The actual food court was way out of walking distance for him, even if he was trying to man up or whatever, but Max didn’t say a word. There was a restaurant called the Thirsty Lion across from the Shake Shack. It was considerably less busy and had actual salads on the menu so Jake put his foot down (metaphorically of course) and dragged Max away from the place of temptation. 

While Max left to go to the bathroom and take his blood reading, Jake picked up his phone and texted his sister. 

“ _I have to get out of the Domi house._ ” 

A moment later he got a response. “ _I’d say take a walk but you know. Don’t do that._ ”

“ _I mean, move out._ ” 

There was a longer pause this time, with a few separate times of his screen saying she was typing and then erasing and then typing again. He knew he might earn her wrath or worse, her pity, but he needed to say it to someone other than himself. 

“ _And why would that dumb idea enter your brain, Jakob?_ ” 

Full name. Well, he probably earned it. He saw Max coming back from the bathroom, looking annoyed. 

“ _Not healthy for me. Talk later?_ ” 

Just as he was setting his phone down he felt the slight vibration. 

“ _Don’t think you are getting out of this conversation._ ” 

He flipped it over to face down on the table. Max slid in across from him, his face still slightly annoyed. Jake tried his best to school his face. He’d learned early on that showing his concern was a very careful process. He put his hands on the table and tried to go with a calm voice. 

“Everything good with your blood sugar? We could get…” 

Max shook his head. “Naw, sugars are good. Siblings are driving me fucking nuts.” 

Jake exhaled and smiled. “I know that feeling. Taylor just used my full name.” 

“What’d you do to face the wrath?” Max said small smile on his face. 

“Said something she didn’t want to hear,” Jake said hastily. “What about you?” 

Max looked down at the menu. “I kinda ditched out on a meetup in LA. We saw each other at the freaking wedding, did they forget what I looked like?” 

Jake had actually, bizarrely, been at the wedding. Tie had invited him giddily on New Year’s and Jake couldn’t have thought of a reason not to go, so he went. It had been weird to see all of Max’s family in one place. The Domi DNA was freaking strong, apparently. 

“You didn’t have to come home,” Jake said.

Max looked up from the menu and frowned at him. “Dude, you’re half broken. I am not leaving you alone at our house. I’m a good roommate, right?” 

The best, really. Well, and the worst. But that wasn’t his fault in the least. He couldn’t help Jake being all up into him. 

Jake nodded fervently. “Yeah, yeah. Just, if you had family stuff I could have chilled on the couch for a few days. And I’m not half broken. I mean… it’s like one-quarter tops.” 

He felt justified with the stupid joke with the smile Max gave him. 

“Well, even at a quarter, I’d rather be here than with my sister yelling at me because I’m not looking to give her nieces and nephews soon enough.” 

Jake choked on the soda he had just sipped. “Wait, what? You’re 22.” 

Max laughed hard enough he had to pull back from the table, he _snorted_. “Not like tomorrow, dude. She says I’m not taking that part of my life _seriously_ enough.” 

“You’re twenty-two!” he said, again, his arms flailing of their own accord. “That’s like. Even if you were… Like… What?” 

“Jake, dude, I am not knocking a chick up in the next season. Chill out,” he said, still bemused, but with a handout because people apparently were looking. 

Jake tried to laugh it off. “I’m just. Wow. I mean, my mom asks if I’m dating. All the time. Just. Babies? Man.” 

“Come on, you’ve got to see it. All the players start young. Louie has a freaking mini human and he’s two years older than me.” 

The idea of raising a kid had crossed his mind at one point or another. He’d definitely pictured a mini family. Someday in the future. Way future. But like. In five years? He couldn’t make his own breakfast. He couldn’t remember his social security number sometimes. He still had to call his mom for the basics. 

“You look like you’re going to be sick,” Max chirped. “No future baby Chych’s? Cause come on, you have to send that DNA somewhere. Where will the models come from when the Zoolander revolution starts?” 

Despite the grossness of ‘sending (his) DNA’ somewhere, he rolled his eyes. “What can I say? It’s not easy being this ridiculously good looking, Max.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Max said, tapping his temple with a finger. “I’m just one of the lowly hand models. We’re the smart ones.” 

Jake had a lot to say to that but he kept it to himself. Instead, he gratefully took the distraction of the waitress. They placed their order and got refills on their drinks. She left and he sat back in the booth. 

“I can’t believe the season starts so soon,” he said, heading off any awkward conversations in the pipeline. “It was a busy summer.” 

“Yeah,” Max said, sipping at his water. “Weird not seeing you all the time.” 

Jake smiled. “Dude, we saw each other like four times.” 

“ _Yeah_ ,” Max said. “But like, you live with me. That’s different. There was no midnight gaming, Carls and Avery were both all up in my business. You are definitely better to live with.” 

Jake looked down at the table and swallowed. _Fuck_. If he wasn’t one hundred percent certain his sister was not mean enough to text Max he would swear she texted to just drop a hint about him wanting to move. Instead, he looked up and smiled. 

“You aren’t terrible to live with, I get partial dog ownership with zero of the negatives. And midnight gaming is awesome.” 

“Partial? That dog thinks you are the greatest and I’m only slightly jealous,” he said. “Plus you let him out in the mornings. Which, I mean, I could totally do, but I get to sleep an extra half hour or so. Fuck right. I love Duke, but best roomie yet.” 

Jake’s palms were sweating. He looked at Max and _almost_ said something. Instead, he tilted his head. “I’m totally telling Duke you said that.”

“Punk,” Max said and kicked his good leg under the table. 

“Ow, you hit a broken person? I’m offended.” 

Max rolled his eyes. “Quarter broke, at tops.” 

* 

After lunch, they tried to walk around for a little bit but only made it about twenty minutes before Jake was out. He tried to point out to Max that he could find a nice place to sit and chill. He had his phone and headphones so you know, he was cool. But Max gave him his patented ‘shut up’ look, and they headed back to the car. 

Without even saying a word Max handed him an unopened Gatorade he had in the back of his car and Jakob took the other painkiller. He hadn’t thought that he would hurt that bad after such a little while but he was wiped. He felt himself falling asleep in the car but pushed himself to stay awake, if only to keep it from being a thing Max could chirp him for. 

The team chat had no need for a picture of him drooling in Max’s BMW. Or worse, all of Instagram, which he would not put past Max. 

He twitched his fingers and tried to follow the lyrics of the song on the radio. That turned out to work but almost be counterproductive because Max had to shove at him to alert him he was in the garage. He had apparently been staring at the stereo intently enough to zone out everything around him. 

“Yo, loser, wake up,” Max chirped. 

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Jake said, just the slightest of slurs to his voice. 

Max nudged him. “Well, your brain was. Come on. You can crash on the couch, it’s closer.” 

“Your room is closest,” he said and after a beat, the red alert went off in his brain at just what he had just said. He looked at Max, whose cheeks were red from laughing. “Couch.” 

“I think you just hit on me,” Max said. “If we’re being technical.” 

“COUCH,” Jake repeated and opened the door, being careful not to hit his own. 

As he got out of the car, ungracefully, Max called from behind him. “Aww, come on don’t be this way, _baby_.” 

He stumbled his way, crutch-less, into the house and down to the living room where he essentially face-planted onto the couch and shifted himself to a comfortable position with the little energy he had left in his body. He caught Max in his periphery and felt the blanket hit his skin. He was warm and happy and the embarrassment couldn’t permeate that. 

He was asleep between one breath and the next. 

* 

When he woke up, Max was seated on the other chair and Jake thought for a split second that he was watching TV but the TV was blank. He shifted up a little bit and frowned. 

“You know, the TV won’t wake me up,” he said. 

“You’re _moving_?” Max said and he sounded so tired and betrayed that Jake knew he couldn’t make some joke about the fact he was still alive. 

He pushed himself further up and swung his feet down to the ground, which was a bad choice all around. His leg tensed and it hurt and he had no idea what he was supposed to say in that moment but he knew that he **should** and that was hard enough. 

Jake swallowed around the curse from the pain. “I was thinking about it.” 

“You were _thinking about it_?” Max said. “Cause your sister seems to think you were more than thinking about it. In fact, she was talking about all the reasons you _shouldn’t_.” 

Still a little sleep fuzzed he was confused. “You talked to Taylor again?” 

“No, but you left your phone in the car and I was putting it by your side when it lit up,” Max said, not even making an attempt at looking guilty of reading his texts. “I saw her name and she made a list of all the reasons to stay. She also said that you couldn’t just leave because of a _crush_.” 

That woke him the hell up. His whole body seized and he flinched because of the pain in his leg but also because _holy shit holy shit holy shit_.

“You… okay. This. This can be explained,” Jake said, nonsensically. It wasn’t like there was much of a way around what was said. He put his hand on his head. “I mean, like. Yeah, okay. Crush could be the word. But it’s not like that big of a deal. I mean. I’ve had crushes on teammates before and they’ve gone away…” 

Which, he guessed was a lie. He had been pretty good at NOT having crushes, but the few he had had were lingering and none had come close to the level he had on Max. But that probably wasn’t the point. Max was staring at him, unreadable and yet tense. 

“See? This was why I thought I should move out. I mean, I know that it’s weird. I get that, and like that’s fine. I can um. I mean, my stuff is still all mostly packed, if you want I can like…” 

Max made an annoyed noise. “I don’t want you to move, fucknuts.” 

He twitched, okay. That was. Not exactly what he was expecting to hear in that moment. “You, I mean. You got to understand, I’ve been making an effort to like… curb it. It’s probably just like… hero worship.” 

_Hero worship._ He really had to stop talking. And moving, as he flinched away at the pain. Max got up and went to the kitchen, coming back two minutes later with the familiar orange medicine tube and a bottle of water. He tossed both at Jake and Jake caught the water bottle while the tube fell near his foot. 

He picked it up and found that when he stood up Max was … not there. He’d walked out of the room. He wasn’t sure what that meant in the least but he figured it wasn’t the best move. Though he _had_ said he didn’t want him to move even AFTER he said the crush thing. Which was a… good sign? Or would be. 

When he told his sister it would be better for his mental health NOT to be around Max at all times he wasn’t kidding. It wasn’t giving him a chance at not having the crush on him. He took one pill and slipped it on his tongue, stood up and despite his better judgment he walked down the hallway on the boot. 

His phone was on his bedside charger, which he assumed Max placed it after reading through the texts. He should muster up some indignation or anger but really, he’s read texts off Max’s phone, generally out loud _to him_. Once, the year previous he’d even done it to a date Max had gone on. The girl had all but proposed in her texts the next day. 

He put his finger on the little button in the middle and opened the screen. There was a picture of his family, and he moved to the little icon that still read 7 missed texts. At very least he hadn’t read the PAST texts. 

After the last one, his sister had sent at lunch he saw what Max must have. 

“ _Moving is just dumb, Jake._

_It’s not like you won’t see him EVERY DAY either way._

_And you like living with him, right?_

_Your crush on him isn’t just going to evaporate._

_Come ON, you aren’t giving him credit. He might be cool with it._

_Don’t ignore me, Jake. You can’t run from your problems._ ” 

His finger hovered over the response box but there was way too much for him to say. He couldn’t just TEXT this shit to her. So he hit the call button and waited through the three rings it took before his sister answered. 

“Jake, listen up, I’ve been thinking…” she answered the phone, big sister authoritative voice in full force. 

“He read your texts,” Jake said flatly. 

The phone went dead silent for a long long moment. Long enough that he would have thought she hung up if it weren’t for the noise in the background. A TV? Friends? (Hopefully not, the fewer people knew the better.)

“Holy… oh, my god. Jake I …” she said and he knew what she was thinking. There wasn’t much to say. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah,” he said. “I fell asleep, and he was putting my phone near my head when you sent your last one.” 

She gave a sharp intake of breath. “I said crush, I told him you had a crush on him. Jake. JAKE. I am _so freaking sorry_.” 

In the grand scheme of his life, he could only remember being truly angry at his sister a few times, but this was not one of them. It was a stupid thing to do, sending those texts when she knew that that being in written form was probably not a good idea was her bad but it wasn’t like she did it maliciously. 

“He kind of took it… badly.” 

Taylor made a noise. “What a fucking asshole.” 

“What? … No, not the _crush_. That he took… weirdly? I don’t know. The moving out. He was more or less glaring me down when he told me he read that I was moving.” 

Taylor hemmed. “Okay, nix the asshole. What a dumbass.” 

“ **Taylor** …” 

“No, both of you. A pair of dumbasses that are rivaled by none. Like. Seriously? You are in a box, dude. With him holding a sign that says, ‘You are in a box.’ and yet you are still asking, ‘WHERE AM I?’ You are THAT DUMB.” 

He half chuckled. “You know that made no sense, right?” 

“You know I’m not good under pressure,” she said. “Still. DUMB. D-U-M-B. Go, get your boy. And tell him your epic stupid feelings and let him know you are most definitely NOT moving out. But maybe moving rooms.” 

He stared at his foot and thought for a long moment about if Soma caused hallucinations. “Are you kidding me here? You weren’t here. He was like… fuming. And he threw a bottle of water at me. To help me take my meds. And then just vanished into thin air. Like I looked up and he was gone. He doesn’t want to talk to me.” 

“YOU ARE IN A BOX, JAKOB,” she screamed and the noise on the other side went silent. So she was around other people. Awesome. “Go. Right now. I am not the one you should be talking to at this second.” 

“You are entirely not helpful,” he sighed, rubbing at his face. 

“Go brotha, get your boy.” 

He exhaled and hoped whoever she was with had no idea who he was because Puck Daddy catching wind of this, however, small market his team was, was not a good choice. “You better be checking for rentals, Tink.” 

“I won’t be. Go.” 

She hung up. She freaking hung up. He was not sure if he should be annoyed or not because he’d been planning on fighting with her as long as he could to make the whole ‘talking to Max’ thing as far in the future as possible. But instead, he was in a quiet room, looking at his stupid foot and knowing that he had maybe ten minutes before his sister called back to make sure he wasn’t chickening out. 

His phone chirped at him and he saw a text.

“ _Get out of the box._ ”

There was a perverted joke and a hockey joke there but he made neither of them. He stood up gently and grabbed his crutches. He was feeling the pain a lot more but he wouldn’t take the other painkiller unless he had no choice. Clearer mind for this conversation. 

Max’s room wasn’t _that_ far from his but he felt like he was walking the Green Mile or some shit. The thump of his the crutches sounded way louder than it ever had and he was sure that Max was being broadcasted that he was coming down there. 

Blessedly though, the door wasn’t locked. Or even fully closed, a sliver of the light from his room making it look almost inviting. _Almost_. 

He heard Max’s voice and he was curious, he moved forward a little bit and heard what was clearly half of a conversation. “… not that way at all, fucker. You aren’t even listening to me. Duke, he wants to move out…” 

Jake closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. He wasn’t even getting the facts right. He didn’t _want_ to, he _needed to_. But either way, eavesdropping wasn’t helping. He picked up one of the crutches and knocked gently on the slightly open door. It moved slightly. 

“Wait,” Max said. “I got to go.” 

The room went silent and Max showed up at the door, opening it up a few inches more than it was but definitely not enough to be inviting. 

He looked at Jake’s crutches. “Are you leaving?” 

“No,” Jake said, shifting his weight from the crutches onto his good leg. “My leg is bugging me.” 

“Go lay down,” Max said, clipped and dismissive. 

Jake inhaled and exhaled and made a face. “I don’t _want_ to move out.” 

Max looked him up and down. “What?” 

“I don’t _want_ to leave,” Jakob said. “I didn’t say that. I said I _need_ to move out. I don’t know. It’s just. I want to be your friend and nursing a crush is embarrassing as fuck when it’s on a friend. So I _should_ but I don’t **want to**. Okay?” 

Max blinked at him. “You want to be my friend, because you have a crush. So you’re moving out of our house.” 

“It isn’t OUR house, Max,” Jake snapped. Okay, maybe the pain wasn’t helpful either, but it was better than the drug haze. “It’s _your_ house. And _your_ dog. And I’m _your_ rookie. That’s what I am, right? Your rookie. **Kid**.” 

The whole conversation was getting out of hand and turning into a fight which was not his intention but his heart was beating so fast in his chest from nerves and pain that he was sure Max could see it. Jake could hear it whooshing in his ears. It was like holding a shell to his ear at the beach. 

He realized he could see Max’s mouth moving but not hear the words. Then he looked down. He was standing upright on his foot and the pain was bad, the exhaustion was bad, the whole thing felt wrong. 

His eyes closed and that felt good.

* 

He opened his eyes to Max looking at him for the second time that day. He blinked. There was a pillow under his head and under his leg but he was still staring up at the hallway’s ceiling. 

“WHAT THE FUCK, CHYCHRUN?” Max hollered an inch in front of his face. 

Jake lifted his head slightly. “What did I do?” 

“You blacked out, what was that?” Max's voice pitched higher and higher. 

“Pain, I think?” He tilted his head back onto the pillow. “Or adrenaline?” 

Max rubbed at his face. “You are going to fucking kill me, Kid.”

Jake grimaced. The nickname bringing in sharp relief what he was fighting at the moment. At least his heartbeat had eased a bit if only his head wasn’t pounding now. He felt rather than saw Orion as he nuzzled at Jake’s hand. This wasn’t even shit’s creek, this was shit’s ocean. He braced his elbows on the floor and started to push up. 

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” 

_Saving the last shreds of my dignity._

“I’m getting up,” he said, with a heavily implied ‘duh’. “You going to help?” 

Rather than help, Max put his hands firmly on his shoulders. “Stay down.”

“Why?” Jake said, pushing both of Max’s hands. 

“Cause you told me you had a crush on me and then you blacked out and I might be freaking the fuck out a bit,” Max said, face looking like he just got checked hard against the boards. “So give me a minute to make sure you’re alive and then I can properly yell at you for being an idiot.”

Jake gave up and laid steady accepting his fate. Max tilted his head, not asking him to move it but rather moving it gently on his own. Apparently, it was up to his satisfaction. He looked down at Jake’s leg, which was stupid as it already had a freaking cast on it. What could it get, MORE broken? But he did and as he lifted it gently off the pillow, Jake hissed because his muscles were not happy with him. 

“I’m getting the Soma,” Max said. 

Jake put a hand up. “Dude, no. I want to actually talk. Then I can take the meds. I swear.” 

“ _Jake_.” 

“I am not talking to you about this,” he said. “They’re my pills, my leg and I am NOT a kid.” 

Max let out an annoyed sound and Jake leaned his head up to face him but instead Max was on his lips and pushing him back down on the pillow. Jake wasn’t prepared for it so the kiss had to be maybe a three out of ten. His mouth had been open, but not in the way that was inviting for anything, so instead he had to reshape his mouth to actually let it count as a kiss. 

“Fuck,” he said when Max pulled back. Max was still giving him the just checked look, and honestly, he felt like maybe he had just been against the boards as well as he wasn’t breathing right. “Wait, I can do better.” 

Max’s face broke, the annoyance evaporating into a weird half hysterical giggle, honest to god giggle. “You can do better?” 

“Don’t laugh at that,” Jake said, speaking louder as he was talking over peels of laughter. “I mean, I wasn’t prepared…. STOP LAUGHING.” 

“We just kissed and your first response was ‘I can do better’?” 

Jake’s brain caught up with the situation in a split second. “We just… we just kissed. Holy fuck. You _kissed_ me.” 

“Ding ding ding,” Max said and Jake was back on his elbows. “What the hell was that?” 

Max knelt back. “I don’t want you to move out. I don’t need you to move out. And I don’t need space to get rid of my crush. Which I have, and realized in early August. I worked out this summer, I was happier with you around. And worse when you weren’t around. The second I knew you were home I booked a flight, Jake.” 

“And you were going to tell me?” 

“Honestly? Not likely. Though my sisters and Duke have been bugging the fuck out of me to do it, I thought it wouldn’t be fair to you.” 

Jake boggled. “Why the hell not?” 

“Cause you lived here, _live here_ ,” Max stated the last part firmly. “And I didn’t want you to think you had to move if I was going to freak you out with the bi thing.” 

“It would be hypocritical of me,” Jake noted. 

Max nodded. “I know that NOW. But I was so pissed you were leaving I wasn’t focusing on that.” 

“I hadn’t made any solid plans besides like, looking at Zillow and telling my sister. Who totally sides with you.” 

He got a shit eating grin at that. “Well, maybe I’m aiming for the wrong Chychrun… OW.” 

Jake removed the finger from under Max’s rib. “Deserved that.” 

“Probably,” Max said, and leaned down to give him another kiss, soft and quick. “I just wanted…” 

Jake pulled him down by the back of his head and kissed him long and hard. Fuck, he needed this kiss. He needed to show Max he _could_ kiss but also he just needed the reality of the kiss. The weight of Max’s body on him. The warm air from his nose on top of Jake’s lips. It was freaking _Max_. 

“We should take this to the couch, this can’t be good for either of our backs or necks and have fun explaining the joint injury to Tocchet,” Max said. 

Jake smiled and got up a little. “Your bed is closest.” 

He reveled in the laugh it brought from Max. 

*

Later, after squealing from three sisters and weirdly _almost squeals_ from Laws and Duke there was a moment of the two of them just seated on the couch. They were going back and forth from lazily making out to watching the MLB network because for some reason Max cared about the Blue Jays. 

Out of nowhere Max looked at him and gave him a satisfied smile. “No moving?” 

“That was an honest question?” 

Max pressed his lips to Jake’s chin and then his dimple. “That was an answer?” 

“Staying here.” 

“Good.” 

“No, right _here_. Fuck practice and rehab, this couch is home now.” 

“Mmm. Okay,” Max said, kissing his lips.

They missed the Blue Jays’ score. Four more times.

" _But it’s a twenty-three four-to-one_  
That you can fall in love by the end of this song  
So get up, get up  
Tell the bookie "put a bet up"  
Not a damn thing will go wrong" 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I played up Chych's injury, as he posted a picture of his two fine looking legs while I was writing this. I am really thankful to be wrong about how bad it was. Get better my sweet baby chick in an egg emoji. 
> 
> Also, thank gosh for freetodream5 and LuciFern for reading over it and pointing out my mistakes. 
> 
> Also also, title from lyrics to BNL's 'Odds Are'
> 
> Oh, and Soma is some powerful shiz, so one might knock him out but if he's used to it, it might give him just a buzz. Says the girl who was on it for neuropathy for a while.


End file.
